


2187 Days

by Irishrose



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:13:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irishrose/pseuds/Irishrose
Summary: 2187 days. That’s how long they’d been stuck in this hell. Not that they hadn’t deserved it. They both had killed the one that they had loved more than life itself, one accidental and the other unavoidable, erasing all hope and meaning in their lives. And what was hell, but the total absence of hope?
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Kudos: 11





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> You will note that the first paragraph is in italics. This is Buffy's POV. This will reoccur with each chapter. However, the remainder of the chapter may or may not be Buffy's POV. I will label any POV that isn't Buffy's. 
> 
> Some dialogue will be borrowed from Becoming Part 2, and Anne.

_2187 days. That’s how long they’d been stuck in this hell. Not that they hadn’t deserved it. They both had killed the one that they had loved more than life itself, one accidental and the other unavoidable, erasing all hope and meaning in their lives. And what was hell, but the total absence of hope? Of course, hope had been dead far longer than that. All hope had died that day so many years ago when they’d both tried to save the world. They’d succeeded, but the price exacted for their pyrrhic victory had been too great for either of them..._

* * *

She raised her sword, ready to strike the killing blow to the thing that wore his face. Angelus’ blood was the only way to open Acathla, and the only way to close it. It was poetic in a certain way. She’d been the one to send Angel to oblivion. It made sense that she should be the one to kill Angelus as well. She had resigned herself to the truth that Angel, her Angel, was truly gone. It was like she’d told Willow earlier, she wasn’t going to get him back. Some things just weren’t meant to be. 

She hadn’t been entirely sure she was ready to face Angelus, but she couldn’t just walk away either. She was the slayer. She might die trying, but she still had to try. And some part of her that she didn’t want to examine too closely had been okay with that because it meant that maybe if there was any justice... But it just wasn’t meant to be. She’d won. All that was left now was to send him…

Angelus gasped and abruptly sat up as something flashed in his eyes, the irises glowing a bright gold in the ambient light of the room. Then he fell forward again, still gasping out ragged breaths, making her pause. As he sat back upright, wiping at tears in his eyes, he looked around, seemingly confused and disoriented. 

“Buffy?” 

Could it be? Was it really him, or was this just another of Angelus’ tricks?

“What's going on?” He squinted up at her, looking for answers as he stood up. “Where are we? I… I don't remember.” 

“Angel?” She lowered her sword and looked for some sign of confirmation or proof that it was really him.

“You're hurt.” He reached up and took note of the cut on her left arm with apparent concern, then pulled her slowly, gently, to him. “Oh, Buffy... God. I... I feel like I haven't seen you in months. Oh, my God, everything's so muddled. I... Oh... Oh, Buffy…”

The contact and his words reassured her as he held her tight, and kissed her shoulder. She could hear Spike and Drusilla fighting and arguing their way back towards the room. She thought he’d knocked her out earlier, but apparently not. Not that any of it mattered now. Somehow, someway, she had Angel back. He was once again holding her and making the rest of the world melt away as tears of relief began to fall. It was him, and he was hers and she was his and…

As she watches, eyes going wide with realization, Acathla’s stone face morphed and changed from its troll-like features to a more demonic scowl. Its eyes began to glow as a swirling vortex emerged from its maw and began to take shape. Acathla was awake and was going to suck them all into hell unless she stopped it. And there was only one way to stop it.

She knew what she had to do. It was the only way. It was a cruel twist of fate that she finally had him back, only to face sending him to hell. Angelus deserved hell, but not Angel, and not like this. They should be celebrating. Instead, she was having to resolve to send him to hell in the most merciful, yet brutal, way possible.

“What’s happening?” He asked as she pulled back to look at his face. The face of the person she loved more than any other. 

“Shhh,” She whispered, reassuring him as she traced over his face, trying to memorize the features. “Don't worry about it.”

She dared to kiss him then. Tentative and chaste at first, but growing desperate quickly as she tried to fit in a lifetime of love in a handful of kisses. 

“I love you,” She told him with absolute surety as she looked into his eyes.

“I love you.” His reply was automatic and equally absolute.

Time was up. The vortex was growing larger and larger by the second and about to swallow them both.

“Close your eyes?” She asked him, nodding her head slightly when he hesitated.

He did. He was trusting her in all things, here and now, despite his confusion. She kissed him one final time, and it felt like her heart was wrenching itself from her chest as she did so, and she knew without a doubt that he would be taking it with him. He would take the last of her, the child, the woman, the innocence, the sense of her true self that she'd only just discovered, all of it, with him. With nothing left inside her, she pulled back, raised her sword, and drove it through his chest and heart and through the other side to ensure his blood would reach the vortex.

An inhuman scream erupted from the doorway to her left as Spike continued to fight Drusilla, barely holding on to her as she kicked and flailed and spun them both around, fighting like a wounded animal caught in a trap and nearing the point of such desperation that it would tear a limb from its own body to escape. 

Long seconds passed, stretching into what seemed like an eternity as Angel reached for her, confused and calling her name. And with every second, something inside her died, leaving an all-consuming hole within that grew bigger and bigger, just as the vortex had. 

Suddenly, she heard Spike roar in obvious pain, distracting her and drawing her attention briefly away from Angel.

“Fine!” Spike shouted, pushing Drusilla forcefully away from him, and then covering the left side of his face with one hand, blood already flowing freely from whatever wounds she’d inflicted. “Have your precious Angelus!”

Drusilla, in her nearly feral state, went reeling backward, stumbling and spinning on suddenly uncertain feet until she fell forward right into Angel, who reflexively caught her with one arm.

“Daddy?” Drusilla clutched at Angel like a lifeline as she looked up into his face, sounding more like a frightened child than a centuries-old vampire.

But all she could see was the dawning realization on his face, mixing with accusing betrayal, and then sad resignation.

“No!” Spike shouted as he lurched forward to make a grab at Drusilla. But he was too late. 

The vortex closed suddenly, leaving only her and Spike surrounded by oppressive, crushing, silence. 

“Oh god,” Spike whispered after several seconds. “What have I done?” 

She could only stare in horror through her tears as Spike suddenly attacked the statue, shouting for it to open up, clawing and scratching at it as he called frantically for Drusilla and then punching until the face of it was lying in pieces on the ground. He slowly crumpled to the ground himself, seemingly unaware of the blood trickling in streams from his bloody hands to begin pooling on the floor at either side of him, as heartrending wails wracked his body.

Angel was gone, killed by her own hand, and he’d taken Drusilla with him. 

After several unconsciously backward steps, the heel of her boot caught on something and she crashed to the ground herself, barely managing to break her fall with her hands scraping against the floor beneath her. She slowly sat up, vaguely noting the pain in her palms, and brought them up in front of her. They were coated in dust, blood oozing from half a dozen scratches and gashes, with splinters sticking out at various angles. It was a physical manifestation of what she’d done. She had blood on her hands. They both did. But at the moment, all she could do was cover her face and cry for everything she’d lost. 

“You!” Spike suddenly growls out in desperate anger, drawing her undivided attention as he starts crawling towards her. “This is your fault! You did this!”

She could see it now, what Drusilla had done to provoke his ill-fated reaction. Four long and deep gashes were torn down one side of his face, one of them through his eye, the edges of ragged skin accentuated with blood still flowing in rivulets down his face. She doubted the one eye could see anything at all, but his other eye was staring intensely, dangerously, at her.

And then, just as quickly as he'd begun, he stopped. He seemed to see something as he stared at her, then he shook his head once before crumbling back to the ground and curling inward on his side to stare into nothingness. 

For long moments, she did the same. Replaying the whole thing in her mind’s eye over and over, seeing his face, his confusion, his concern, and feeling his arms holding her, his lips against hers... The sword sticking out of his chest... 

“You should go.” Spike’s tired, cold, gravelly, monotone voice finally broke the silence. 

Go? Go where? Her mother had threatened to put her back in the mental institution and then told her not to ever come back. Giles and her friends were injured, dead, and possibly dying, all because of her. Her own mother didn’t want her. The one person who had seemed to love her above all else was now gone.

“I don’t have anywhere to go.” The words were more to cement the reality of them than anything else.

“Go!” He shouted out at her, temporarily shaking her from whatever trance she’d fallen under.

“What will you do?” She isn’t sure why she even asked. Not like she cared.

He laughed. It was soft at first, a little rolling giggle of madness more than mirth. It eventually trailed off, and he fell silent again. 

“Just… go.” He finally whispered. “Please.”

She nodded as she stood, belatedly realizing he couldn’t see her since he was still staring at some distant nothing. She felt the sudden need to get away from this place as fast and as far as she could. She couldn’t stay here, not just in the mansion, but in Sunnydale. She’d lost too much to stay here. She needed to go far away. Someplace big, with too many people and faces for any single one to matter. Maybe then, she could lose herself as well. No more Buffy. No more slayer.

“Los Angeles.” She just wanted him to know. She wouldn’t think too hard about why. “I think... I’ll go to L.A.”

No answer came from Spike. He didn’t even twitch in acknowledgment. For all she knew, he’d probably passed out or gone catatonic. On trembling legs, she turned and walked slowly and deliberately out of the mansion and into the morning light. 

Somehow she found herself on Revello street, staring up at her bedroom window. She would need clothes and money. She had a little bit she’d been saving up to go all out for prom next year. It would be enough to get her a place for a couple of weeks until she could find a job somewhere that paid in cash and didn’t ask for identification. She climbed quickly and quietly, knowing her mother would be up soon if she weren’t already. She grabbed the essential things she needed. At the last minute, she decided to leave her mother a note telling her that she would do as she asked. She was leaving for good. She told her not to look for her, not that she thought she would, and that despite everything, she still loved her. She also asked her to please tell her friends the same. It felt like a bunch of empty platitudes. Parting words she didn’t… couldn’t... feel no matter how much she wanted to. But knew she should still say it. Knew some of them might want to hear the words.

She’d contemplated getting a bus ticket but decided that was money she couldn’t afford to spend. So she started walking, putting her thumb out as cars passed by. She was young and pretty on the outside; someone would give her a ride. It wasn’t like she couldn’t overpower anyone that tried anything, and free was better than even the reasonable ten bucks for a ticket. Ten bucks would feed her for a couple of days if she was careful and planned well. 

She’d been walking for what seemed like hours, stopping periodically anywhere she could find shade, when a massive old black car went roaring past her. She’d tried pasting on her best smile, but just like all the other cars, it didn’t even slow down. She supposed she didn’t deserve a break. She let out a defeated sigh as she turned and resumed her steady pace just in time to see and hear the car come to a screeching stop in the middle of the road. It sat there unmoving as if waiting for her. She picked up her pace and started jogging towards it when it suddenly started backing up towards her at a high rate of speed, veering back and forth enough to make her worry that the driver might not be sober. She had to jump back a little as it came sliding to another screeching stop next to her.

The windows were all blacked out, painted on the inside, apparently. No wonder the driver was all over the road. Suddenly the door popped open, necessitating yet another little skip out the way. Slowly and tentatively, making sure to stay an arm’s length away from the car, she leaned over far enough to see the lone driver sitting inside. It was Spike. 

He didn’t look at her. Didn’t even say anything to her. He just kept looking straight ahead, hands gripping the wheel so tight, she was certain it was warping from the pressure, and the rest of his muscles were tense and coiled like a tiger that was poised and ready to pounce. She shouldn’t get in. She knew that. He was dangerous. He was hurting and wounded. She considered for a moment what could happen if she did get in. He pushed the gas, loudly revving the engine, telling her clearly to make up her mind before he changed his. She would be taking her life in her own hands if she got in... 

She slung her bag off her shoulder and into the floorboard of the passenger side and climbed in. She’d barely managed to reach for the open door when he slammed the car in drive and took off, tires once again squealing in protest, causing the door to briefly jerk against her and then slam shut as the car swerved back onto the road and picked up speed. She not so covertly checked for a seatbelt as she settled into the seat, but found only a stub where one had been cut out. Not that she was necessarily surprised. She didn’t suppose vampires cared much about safety things like seatbelts. She turned and locked the door before pulling her legs and feet up into the seat and hugging them to her as she leaned her head against the window and curled into a tight ball as far away from the vampire as she could get. As the miles passed, she eventually let the exhaustion of the last few days overtake her, and she fell into a fitful and restless sleep.

She jerked awake right as she was thrusting the blade through Angel’s heart. A dream. It had been a dream. Her muscles were protesting their cramped position as she straightened up and looked around. Not a dream, a nightmare of reliving what she’d done. She was still sitting in Spike’s car, though judging by the lack of light shining through the windows, it was now night. She looked over at him, sitting calmly in the driver’s seat, smoking a cigarette as he stared out the front windshield. 

“Where are we?” She chanced to ask. 

“Outskirts of L.A.” Was his solemn reply as he suddenly opened his door and got out of the car, slamming the door shut again. 

Apparently, that was her cue to get out. She grabbed her bag, slinging the strap over her shoulder as she climbed out herself, trying to figure out where they’d stopped. It appeared to be a park or rest stop somewhere, but the hills were blocking her view of the city proper, so it was hard to say.

“Let’s do this, slayer,” His angry voice growled from behind her. 

Confused, she turned to stare at him as he stood there in a fighting stance, ready to go. He’d just given her a ride to Los Angeles, and he wanted to fight her? Of course he wanted to fight her. He blamed her for killing Drusilla. He would want revenge. So she put down her bag, stepped away from the car, and fully faced him. 

“I don’t have a stake, Spike,” She said, feeling tired well beyond her years. “No weapons. I’m not the slayer anymore. I’m done.”

He dropped his hands suddenly and looked at her like she’d gone completely mad. Exaggeratedly rolling his eyes, he stomped over to the nearest tree and broke off a sizable piece of a branch. He made sure it had a point at one end and tossed it to her. She didn’t even try to catch it. With a growl, he stomped over to her and picked up the makeshift stake before grabbing her hand and then firmly placed said stake in it and wrapped her fingers around it. He then backed away and waited. 

“One last fight,” He said when she didn’t seem to take up a fighting stance. His voice was almost… pleading? “Come on, slayer! You owe me that!” 

She looked at the stake in her hand. She wasn’t that person anymore. She’d meant it when she’d said she was done.

“I can’t,” She whispered out as she opened her hand and let the stake fall from it. “I’m sorry.”

He looked completely and utterly bewildered by her apology. 

“I can walk the rest of the way,” She tells him as she picks up her bag once again and turns to leave. “Thank you… for the ride.” She turns back slightly, making eye contact. 

Something unspoken passes between them. Some silent communication that she isn’t sure either of them knows what it means. But he walks around her, shrewdly maintaining a squinting and cautious eye contact as he grabs the handle of the passenger side door and pulls it open. He stands there, waiting. She climbs in again, and the door closes behind her. A second later, he slides in through the driver’s side. He pauses a moment, shakes his head, and then starts the car and pulls back onto the road. 

She stares at the blacked-out window as he drives. It’s appropriate. Everything inside has gone dark. She feels nothing. Sees nothing. Is nothing. Not anymore. That's the point.

“Last stop,” He says as he pulls into a parking lot of some skeezy looking motel. He puts the car in park and turns off the engine. “Figure you can make your way from here.”

She nods absently, once again opening the door and stepping out with her bag. Time to start over. Just another face in the crowd. She plods towards the motel office, each step seeming to drain more and more from her, leaving more and more of herself behind. As she pulls open the door to the office and enters, a short and greasy little man in a stained tee eyeballs her from his spot behind the desk. Just another face, a no one, she reminds herself. 

“I-I’d like a room, please,” She asks politely, setting down twenty dollars to cover the advertised price on the sign while trying not to make eye contact.

“Name?” He grumbles at her as he pulls out a ledger.

“Um… Anne...” She answers. “Winters. Anne Winters.”

The guy gives her a dubious look.

“You got any I.D. ‘Anne’?” He asks with a sneer, stressing her name in a way that said he clearly didn’t believe her.

Damn. The place looked so run down and empty, she’d thought for sure he would jump at the cash.

“Look, kid…” The greasy little guy said, leaning forward. “Legally, I can’t give you a room with no I.D.” He then gives her a disturbing leer that makes her skin crawl. “But we might be able to come to an under…”

Suddenly a hand slams down two more twenty dollar bills on top of hers. 

“I.D.,” A voice growls at the guy. 

She turns to see Spike, standing there in full vampire face, staring at the guy as a low rumbling growl echoes around the small room. It was one of those low, almost subsonic, rumbles that reaches inside you to grab something and twist it into knots of primal terror.

The little guy nods, clearly scared out of his mind, as with shaky hands, he grabs a random key out from behind the desk and starts to hand it to her. Spike snatches it out of his hand. With a final warning growl at the guy, he also grabs the three twenties still sitting on the counter and stomps out of the office without looking back. 

She follows him then, down the sidewalk, as he looks at each door until he finds the one matching the number on the key tag. He stabs the key in the lock and turns it, pushing the door open with one hand while he flips on the light switch with the other. It wouldn't have offered much light even if it wasn't flickering. He gives the room an appraising look and then steps further inside and out of her way. She sets her bag on the bed, looking around at the meager furnishings as he silently tosses the key and the money on the bed and turns to leave.

“I’m sorry,” She tells him flatly, standing in the flickering darkness. It seems like the right thing to say. “About Drusilla.”

A growl resonates from behind her. 

“I don’t think you could have stopped her,” She tries to offer him a cold measure of comfort. “Drusilla was…”

“Don’t!”

Suddenly she finds herself bodily hauled up against an incredibly pissed off vampire. One of his hands is wrapped in her hair and pulling her head back at an awkward angle while the other holds her by one arm, locking her in place against him. “You don’t get to say her name, slayer.”

She looks into his eyes with dead calm and replies, “There is no slayer… just Anne.”

He shifts into full vamp face and roars in anger at her words, but she doesn’t even flinch. And then he crushes his mouth to hers, a bruising mockery of a kiss clearly meant to punish rather than arouse. She tastes blood when he finally pulls his head away, apparently gauging her reaction. 

“I’m sorry,” She repeats, again flat. She doesn’t think it’s in her to put anything behind it. 

“Fight me, slayer!” He bodily shakes her. “Hit me, push me away, hell, break my nose, but sodding do something!”

She sees them then, the tears he’s holding back. The emotional dam ready to burst any second and consume him. How? How can he feel so much now when all she feels is numb? How can he be so full of emotion when she’s so empty? How can he feel anything? Can she siphon some of that? Feel something? Anything? Or is she really dead inside? 

For one brief moment, she wonders if maybe she can make the outside match the inside. She pushes up on her toes and kisses him. She puts as much urgency and violence as she can into it searching, pulling, licking, bruising, biting…

“Ow!” He turns loose of her arm, drawing his fingers across his lower lip. His fingertips come away coated in blood. He glances between the fingertips and her eyes twice before wrapping his hand tighter in her hair and yanking her head back even further to a painful angle and then returning the kiss with renewed brutal purpose.

Clothes are shed or torn away in urgency. Shoes are kicked away to rest wherever they fall, and his belt is sent flying across the tiny room. Her bra is discarded as her underwear is torn from her body. It was as if her body was acting with a mind of its own, and she surrendered to it. Anything to stop the thoughts swirling in her mind, accusing her, calling her what she was… a killer. No, not just a killer, a murderer. 

And then she was suddenly on the bed, the weight of him pinning her to the mattress as he tongued and nipped uncomfortably at one breast and nipple as his fingers slipped inside her, pumping furiously as his thumb tapped and rubbed her clitoris in an asynchronous rhythm, building and building something that feels like it might suffocate her if it keeps up at this rate. 

He switched to the other breast, taking it in his mouth as his right hand kept up its treatment of rough kneading and pinching the other, all of it bordering on a line that walked dangerously somewhere between pleasure and pain and sometimes crossed it. He pumps his fingers in and out more vigorously, reaching further inside with each stroke until he reaches a certain spot, and her breathing gets increasingly more difficult. 

How could she let him do this? She’s only ever been with anyone just the once, and Angel hasn’t even been dead a full day yet. No, this wasn’t that. This was her walking to the gallows. What about Spike? Didn’t he love Drusilla? No, this wasn’t that for him either. This was punishment. Though whether they were punishing themselves or each other was anyone's guess. Either way, neither seemed to be able to stop this weird frenzied battle of a different kind. She was betraying Angel and herself in the worst way possible. The emptiness grew and expanded inside her, stealing her breath and squeezing her chest painfully. She begins to thrash underneath him, almost in a panic as she feels more and more like she’s suffocating, some invisible weight crushing her chest, stopping her from breathing as tears begin to flow freely from her eyes that continue to stare at nothing. No, not nothing. Him, with his eyes full of betrayal and resignation staring back at her. Can't he see? That she’s suffocating? That she’s dying? That he can end it?

Yellow eyes fade to blue, staring at her face with confusion rather than betrayal. Something passes over his own face. Some understanding or interpretation, of what she doesn’t know. He slows the pace of his fingers to an agonizingly languid rhythm, his thumb abandoning her clitoris entirely as he leans back down to kiss a wet trail along her jawline to her ear. He slowly traces around the shell of it with his tongue before whispering into her ear, “Breathe, slayer.”

He returns to her mouth, stilling her frantic head-shaking by kissing her slowly this time as if savoring the sensation. He removes his fingers from inside her body and then kisses his way to her other ear. As her dizziness intensifies and her vision darkens around the edges, she feels the tip of his cock pressing against her opening, and he whispers to her once again, “Let it go, luv. Just feel.”

Without further warning, he plunges deep inside her with a single thrust, and she suddenly feels like she’s flying apart. Every nerve ending sparks to life as she reflexively gasps in life-giving air. 

“Tha’s it,” His voice soothes her as he wraps his arms under her back to grasp the top of her shoulders from behind. “In and out,” He says with what seems like deliberate slowness. “In and out.” The words keep an almost hypnotic cadence with each slow and bone-deep thrust inside her. 

“Better?” He asks, tonguing the oddly sensitive skin just behind her ear and sending a chill thrilling down her spine. 

All she can do is nod as an involuntary low and needful moan frees itself from somewhere inside her.

His pace starts to pick up, slowly at first, seeming to build a slow-burning fire inside her core, and all she can think is that she wants more. Wants the fire to burn. Wants it to consume. Wants it to consume until there’s nothing left.

She begins to try and meet his thrusts searching for something, anything, to help this feeling. He seems to sense her need as he grips her knee with one hand and pulls it up even with his chest and pins it there with his arm as he goes back to bracing himself above her. She begins to see stars as the change in angle has him hitting that spot inside her again, sending swirling jolts of lightning and expanding through her body with every thrust. 

Each thrust now sends her world spiraling in a direction she didn’t even know existed as he quickens his pace faster and harder. He claims her mouth again, more urgent, needier as his own breath starts coming to him in pants and soft gasps. Her own breathing matches his in cadence and depth until he snakes a hand between them and finds her clitoris, once more tapping out a staccato signal to her body, begging her to release. And oh how she truly wants release, in more ways than one.

She is so close, she thinks, so very nearly close. She can feel it… Her body feels like it is climbing and climbing, reaching toward something, looking for the edge of heaven or hell itself. Another few moments and they’ll both be falling over this precipice. She can feel him near it as well as his movements become more frenzied, less coordinated. She reaches up to push his head away from her lips, earning herself a bewildered look until she turns her head to the side, exposing her neck and pulling his face towards it. 

He freezes instantly, every muscle turning to stone as his mouth hovers just over her pulse point. She cries out in objection, begging him not to stop and pushing his head harder to connect with her exposed neck. Begging him to please do it. That she needs him to do it.

He renews his thrusts again, now with almost bone-jarring intensity. He furiously rubs her clitoris to her immense relief. She feels him change, the sharp angles of his face becoming more so, pressing harder into her. 

“Please,” Her request comes as part needful moan and part fretful whimper. 

She feels the sharp sting as his fangs pierce her skin, his bite sinking deeper and deeper into her vein as he suddenly surges inside her and the dual sensations send her soaring over the edge and shattering, falling into a million pieces spread out among the stars of the midnight sky. 

“Take it all…” She whispers her plea as with each pull at her neck she thrills at the approach of the darkness of blessed oblivion and she finally sets loose the last of her tears in overwhelming relief at the prospect of her real release. 

She vaguely feels him tear his mouth away from her, and turns wearily to see through watery eyes that his human face is once again looking down at her. Shock and confusion stare back at her but soon fades to anger. Once again, she begs him to take it all, crying and pleading with him to take it all. He slips from her body and rolls them over, pulling her halfway on top of him. She pushes up and pounds against his chest and face with her fists as he just glares at her, fueling her anger and desperation even more. She sits up and straddles him, continuing the barrage of fists as words and tears intermixed with an unintelligible litany of sounds that only the most wounded animals can make, the last vestiges of her remaining energy draining from her with each blow until nothing is left but a sobbing mess crying against his chest until she finally surrenders to the dark respite of unconsciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

_How long had it been back home? They told every new group of slaves that one hundred long years would pass here in just one single day back on earth. Whether that was true or not she didn’t know. She had no frame of reference. Would her friends still remember her? Were they even alive? Did they miss her? She didn’t deserve to be missed. Didn’t deserve friends. She was no one. The only thing she deserved was this hell that had become their new home 2187 days ago._

* * *

_Spike_

Bugger all if he knew why he’d done it that day. He’d thought about it for a few months now and still hadn’t a bloody clue. Asked himself every sodding night why he did it. Why they’d done it. Punishing each other? Maybe. Punishing themselves? Also maybe. Sure, he’d planted that first brutal kiss on her trying to rattle her out of whatever cage her mind had crawled into, hoping she’d shake it off and fight him, hoping it would make her start acting like a bloody slayer. Then she’d bit him and drawn blood, and Christ if he hadn’t been equal parts furious and randy as fuck. Still, he’d be hard-pressed to call what happened a punishment. Some twisted up form of solace then? Something to take their minds off their own guilt? Also possible. What was it that bloody awful song said? Can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with? Didn’t seem to ring true in his mess of thoughts, though. Couldn’t seem to suss a bit of it out. Maybe it was all of that and more, hell if he knew. The one thing he did know since right after he’d hightailed out of there after the chit passed out, was that he was well and truly buggered. He’d known that the moment he’d decided to sit and watch the door to her room until the approaching dawn told him to find more permanent shelter than the DeSoto thinking maybe a bit of kip would put him back in his right mind. God knows he’d certainly been out of it from the moment he’d decided to stop when he’d seen her hitchin’, but at least she’d just dozed off like she wasn’t cooped up in a car with a vampire.

It had been right unsettling when he’d pulled off the road and let her sleep. Not that he’d had a choice, really. His own mind had been racing through the earlier events to the point of dangerous distraction. He’d nearly run off the road more than once. So he pulled off with every intent to wake her up but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Then he figured he’d let her rest and they could have it out when she woke. Not that what she’d been doing could exactly be called restful, but he figured it counted for something. Except then she’d gone and pulled that “no more slayer” card and he simply hadn’t known what in the bloody hell to do with that. By the time he found a place to unload her, he’d made up his mind that he wasn’t going to let her cheat him out of their last dance. 

No, he was determined to make sure the slayer was going to give him one last fight. She owed him that. But he’d be damned, well more damned, if he was going to take this slayer when she wasn’t even willing to defend herself. He knew she had it in her to put up one hell of a fight. He’d seen it with his own eyes dozens of times. Hell, she’d handed him his arse more than once and put him in a chair for months. No, she would give him one glorious all-out battle where he could hold his head high and say he’d either bested or been bested by the best of them all. Problem was, how the hell was he supposed to do that if she went and checked out on him?

As soon as he’d seen the manky waste of flesh motel clerk through the window, he’d known she’d have trouble. Silly chit couldn’t even get herself a room at a hotsheet without fallin’ prey in her current state of mind. That’s when he made up his mind. He’d wait her out. She couldn’t just check out of her life and calling forever. She was still the slayer whether she liked it or not. He wasn’t normally the patient sort and even less one for playing the long game. That had been Angelus’ style. But for this one, for this slayer, he would wait. The bloody bitch owed him one last dance and he was going to collect it come hell or high water. She’d come around eventually, and when she did he would slip in and they’d have that final dance. At least, that’s what he told himself nearly four months ago. 

Now he didn’t know what the bleedin’ hell he was doing. He never should have turned around. Should have walked out the fecking door and never looked back. But then she’d gone and said Dru’s name, actin’ like she cared even though her voice carried about as much life in it as that bloody statue that had sucked Dru and Angelus into hell. Put together, it had rubbed salt in the still-fresh wound. For a split second, he’d very nearly snapped her neck. But then he’d seen her eyes, and it had pissed him right off for a whole different reason. He’d hoped that assault on her mouth would shake her up. Set some spark alight in the slayer and wake her up. Well, it had certainly woken something up.

Christ, she’d been a glorious revelation and then some. Body like a fine instrument and she hadn’t the first notion of how to play it. Fought herself into a fit of guilt and terror. And despite all that, he could see why it would have driven the soul right out of Angelus. Hell, he’d have sold his own soul if he’d had one. When she’d asked him to bite her, he’d had a brief bit of begrudging respect for Angelus assuming that mark on her neck was his. In hindsight, that had probably been the moment she’d gotten under his skin. Infected him like a parasite. Her blood still sang in his veins and called to him like a siren's song. But then she’d gone right off the deep end and begged him to drain her. Bloody slayers and their damned death wishes. He wasn’t about to let her off that easy. He was going to make sure this one lived until she was damn well ready to fight him again.

He’d intervened in small ways here and there. He figured it might help to speed up the process a bit of getting her back to herself. The longer she rolled around in the muck, the more it would cling to her and keep pulling her down. He didn’t want her down. He didn’t want this Anne Winters tripe she was playing; he wanted Buffy Summers, Slayer. He wanted their final deadly dance, and the sooner the better. So he’d made sure her landlord didn’t try to take her rent out in trade and ensured the guy was highly motivated to give her a discount rate she could afford with the crap money she was making at that diner. He’d also reminded a handsy yokel or three about the proper way to treat a lady. They’d have a hell of a time copping a feel now without most of their fingers. He’d cut a fair swath of territory around the area and made sure the other nasties knew this slayer was off-limits. She was his alone to kill. It was all just biding his time until the slayer in her kicked in again, and they had their one last dance. And it would be the last dance, for one or both of them.

He was debating the merits of turning a few minions to throw at her and see if that would get things moving when, by some freakish twist of fate, one of those vampire groupies from Sunnydale showed up and recognized her. When her beau went missing that night, the girl had begged the slayer to help her find him. He’d seen it then, even from a distance. Just enough of a spark to give him some hope that the slayer might be waking up. Coming back to her proper self, as it were. And now she was walking right into a trap. 

He’d seen the demons out fishing among the homeless. Baiting the downtrodden, the dregs, and the kids with nowhere to go. Could smell the fire and brimstone rolling off them from blocks away. It wasn’t any of his concern what happened to the ones thick enough to fall for their little missionary ruse. Not until the slayer had shown up on the mission doorstep looking for the missing kid, anyway, with what had to be the worst undercover job he’d ever seen. Couldn’t she sense that the lot of them were demons? Why in the hell was she going inside? Daft bloody chit. Now he’d have to go tear off some heads because apparently, this group hadn’t gotten the message that the slayer was off-limits. Then again, she’d been the one to serve herself up on a platter.

He’d given it a minute or two, hoping he’d see her emerge from the place covered in demon entrails and finally looking like the slayer she’d been. But when that didn’t happen, he kicked in the door and went charging in. He found her in some little room next to what looked like an old baptistry filled with tar, except the massive amount of energy radiating off of it told him otherwise. Not a lot of things that give off that sort of power. Damn hard to hold open a gateway indefinitely.

“Bloody hell, Slayer, don’t you have even one lick of self-preservation?” He’d stormed right up to her, nose to nose. 

“Spike?” She looked right confused to see him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Slayer?” 

He chose to ignore the suddenly confused demon standing next to her. 

“Savin’ your hide, that’s what!” He was so angry he could rip out her spine and drink from her brain stem. “You walked right into their bloody trap!”

“Trap?” Her confusion would be amusing if it weren’t so damn frustrating.

“They’re demon’s, slayer!” He tells her, pointing at the one standing next to her. “Traffick in humans, best I can tell.”

“Well, this is awkward,” The demon pipes up. “But it’s nothing we can’t work with.”

“What the bloody hell does that mean?” He turns his fury on the demon right as it reaches out and pushes the slayer backward into the black pool. 

His mind flashed to a similar scene four months ago. The woman he’d loved for over a century falling right into the vortex to hell. Except he’d been the one to push and couldn’t reach her in time when he’d realized his mistake. As much as he’d like to blame the slayer, he’d been the one to end her. Killed his own sire by accidentally sending her to hell. And it was happening again right in front of him.

“Not this time!” He lunges forward, grabbing a hold of the slayer's flailing arm as she falls, arresting her descent just before she hits, but it’s a precarious and awkward grab that he can’t hold or sustain. 

“Spike?” Her frightened voice carries up in an eerie echo of Dru’s last word, complete with an expression to match it.

And then they both tumble into the pool. Or through it is more like it. They land in a heap on a concrete floor, the black pool now on the ceiling above them. 

The demon that nudged the slayer drops to the ground next to them as he rises, and aids the slayer in getting to her own feet. 

“Welcome to my world,” The guy says as both he and the slayer take in the vast foundry in front of them and the mass of humans calling to mind work camps in a war he’d just as soon forget. “I hope you like it. You’re never leaving.”

And then everything went black.


	3. Chapter 3

_They’d been lucky; if such a thing existed in hell. After being vigorously clubbed, they’d been chained and thrown in a cell together with the apparent initial hope that one would kill the other if either got free enough from their chains, thus preventing anyone earthside from interfering with their little scheme. When that didn’t happen, they simply left them together; afraid of what they might do if put in the general population. Couldn’t have a vampire eating their slaves, nor a slayer suddenly inspiring them to rebel against their overlords. They also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use them both as workhorses with their strength and stamina many times that of the rest of the slaves… once they’d been sufficiently broken down, that is..._

* * *

_Buffy - Day 2_

“Well, well, look who finally decided to join the party.” A voice grates and scrapes against the inside of my skull as I slowly come awake. “Was beginnin’ to wonder if it was gonna take a sodding Prince Charming to wake your arse up.”

Judging by the pain in my head, I’m amazed I even have a skull left to grate on. And that’s just the top of the list of pains overloading my brain at the moment. It takes me several seconds to push down the nausea and pain enough to work myself into a semi-sitting position, leaning against some sort of stone wall behind me. It’s a difficult task made even more so by the monstrously heavy chains attached to thick shackles around my wrists and ankles. 

“Spike?” I’m fairly certain there’s only one British voice that annoying. 

“Managed to scrape a few brain cells together, did you?” 

Could the jerk _be_ any more annoying?

“You chained me up?” I ask him, trying to piece together what had happened and not doing a very good job of it. There are too many strange sounds in the distance and weird smells and even the modest light in the room seemed too bright to let me look around at all. 

“Guess not.” He scoffs. “Don’t go blamin’ this on me you daft twit. You’re the one who went marchin’ into a demon trap and fell arse over tit through a bloody portal and pullin’ me down with you. Thanks ever so for that, by the way.” 

I’m too tired to really make any sense of what he’s talking about. My eyelids feel like they’re heavy, too heavy to keep open for very long. The light hurting my eyes and head doesn’t help in that regard either. Maybe if I just rested a little longer…

“Slayer?” 

I heard someone calling, but it seems far away. I’ll just rest until they get here.

“SLAYER!” 

A voice screamed at me, stabbing through the darkness and right into my brain like an icepick, jolting me a little more awake. 

“No sleepin’ on the job! Already had enough of a kip, yeah?”

Kip? Chit? 

“Spike… what…?” I can’t quite finish my thought. Was there a thought to finish?

“Bloody sods nearly brained you, is what,” His voice seems a little clearer, now. “Need to stay awake, slayer, ‘cause we’re fresh out of ruddy Princes and I doubt you’d fancy waking up the original way of Sleeping Beauty.”

“Sleeping Beauty?” Maybe they have brained me because none of this was making any sense. Wait, who’s ‘they’?

“Least these demons don’t seem to be overly interested in their chattel if you know what I mean.” 

Did he really have to keep talking so much? 

“Also keep the men and women separate best I can tell. Not sure why they threw us in together.”

“Well, one, that would just be disgusting. I mean, humans? Really? Blech!” A strange but sort of familiar voice from somewhere nearby joined the conversation. “Two, who needs breeding when there’s an endless supply on the streets? Not to mention it has a tendency to cut into their productivity. Three, it’s not like we can just put you two in with the rest of the slaves. Sort of negates all the trouble we went to luring them here if we turned a bottom-feeding halfbreed loose to start snacking on them, doesn’t it?”

A low growl starts rumbling from off to my right somewhere, which does nothing but add to the noise reverberating around in my head. 

“Growl all you like, halfbreed.” The voice, a guy maybe, laughs as he says it. “I suggest you get comfy. Those chains can hold animals twice your strength combined, so neither of you are going anywhere.”

“Halfbreed?” I ask. Who is this guy talking to?

“That would be your pet vampire, slayer. Or should I say, ‘Anne’?” 

“Oi!” I hear Spike shout and reflexively shrink away from the sound. “Not anyone’s pet, much less the slayer’s. Was plannin’ to kill the chit ‘til you lot tried to run off with her.”

“Sure, keep telling yourself that, Scrappy,” The guy scoffs at Spike again. “I gotta ask though, ‘Anne’,” He stresses the name again with annoyance. “What is it that a slayer and a vampire are running from?”

“Not running.” I manage to respond as I squint up at him and notice for the first time that I’m in some sort of cage or cell. And that his face is really weird. Clearly a demon of some sort.

“Oh, please, you think you can fool me? I’ve been doing this for eons. I know you, ‘Anne’.” 

There’s that increasingly annoying little cant in his voice again.

“It’s not demons you two are running from… well, not the actual kind, anyway; so what is it? Not that it matters, really. See,” He squats down to my eye level. “You’re all the same. Both of you so pathetically determined to run away from whatever. To disappear. To make certain that no one will ever find you. Well, congratulations. You both got your wish.”

“Big talk for someone standin’ outside a cell,” Spike’s voice starts taunting the guy as he stands back up. “Why don’t you open that door and unlock these chains and I’ll show you bottom feeder?” 

“I wouldn’t scrape mud off my shoes on you, halfbreed. And neither of you are going anywhere for a long time. You two are worth at least three or four humans in strength alone. Think we’re going to turn loose of an opportunity like that? Of course, you’ll probably die of starvation or thirst by the time you’re broken enough to start putting you to work, but whatever or whoever is left will make all of this worth it for at least another 80 years.”

“Eighty years?” I can’t help the tinge of confused panic in my voice. 

“Oh, that,” He chuckles a couple of times. “See, time moves more quickly here than in your dimension. A hundred long years will pass here, but on Earth? Just a day.”

“So what? You just work ‘em ‘till they’re too old to be any use or they keel over and then you pop ‘em back out topside?” 

Spike’s words are starting to make a lot more sense now, and at the moment I don’t think that’s a good thing. 

“That’s the plan. If you survive long enough to be useful, that is. We’ve never done this with a vampire before, or a slayer. Then again, we’ve never had either one practically serve themselves up on a platter for us. Speaking of, you’ll have to forgive us but we’re not exactly provisioned for bottom feeders, here, and I’ve already mentioned that the other slaves are too valuable to let you eat them. I’m kind of excited to see what happens when something like you goes without food for years.”

‘You can’t…” I try to protest.

“Oh, but we can.” His amusement is evident in his reply. “But if I were you, I’d worry more about myself and when you’ll be getting any food or water. See… you have to _earn_ those here... ‘Anne’.”

I can only stare up at him in abject horror. 

“Welcome to hell.” He grins maliciously at me. 

“Please,” Spike snorts, “Not even close to hell.”

“Isn’t it?” The demon retorts. “What is hell, but the total absence of hope? Judging by you two, I’d say you’ve been in hell for a while already. Your own personal hell, of course. But this is the real thing, kids. The substance of it. The tactile proof of never-ending despair and torment. The place you’ve both been running toward your whole lives. Welcome home.”

His maniacal laugh renews the stabbing pain in my head again. 

“Pillock,” Spike mumbles out what I’m guessing is an insult as I slump to the side and lay back down on the ground again. 

It’s hard and it hurts but at the moment I really don’t care.

“Oi! Slayer!” He’s back to calling out to me again as I try to surrender to the call of sleep that’s pulling me down further and further.

I decide to ignore him.

“Slayer?” He calls more urgently, and loudly.

Too tired to move. Hurts too much to move. 

“Buffy?!” 

My name cuts a little more clearly through the darkness and I open my eyes to look over at him. 

“Gotta stay awake, luv,” He starts talking again. “Least a few hours, anyway.”

I frown at him. When did he get all covered in bruises? 

“You’re hurt?” The question slips out unchecked. I shouldn’t care. Not that I do. I just need to know what’s going on.

“Been worse,” He shrugs. “Tossers had a right go at both of us earlier. Woke up in this not so fun sort of dungeon,” He rattles the shackles and chains around his own wrists for emphasis. “Chained up, with you half brained and bleedin’ everywhere.”

I try to push up again, but it’s too much work. “How long have I been out?” 

“Hard to say,” He seems to be hedging. “Got no sense of night or day here, but judgin’ by the work shifts, I’d say about 24 hours.”

“A day? I’ve been out a whole day?” I don’t think I’ve ever been knocked out for more than a few hours maybe.

“Well, what with the bleedin’ head wound, my guess is you’ve got a hell of a concussion or three, slayer. Hence the need for stayin’ awake.”

“I… I don’t think they do that anymore,” I tell him with more than a little uncertainty. 

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly keen on the idea of you slipping off into a coma.”

“Not like I’ve got anything better to do,” I tell him, once again closing my eyes. “Maybe it’s better this way.”

“Bleedin’ Christ, slayer. You need to get over this little pity party of yours and start fighting!” His voice is getting louder, angrier. “How are we supposed to get out of this hell hole if you decide to go belly up on me?”

“Aren’t,” I answer him plainly. “You heard what he said.”

“That was nothing more than a load of tosh!” He almost growls on that last word. “Nothing more than head games, Buffy. Hell, Angelus was a far sight better at that than this sod!”

Angelus. Angel. Hell. And I sent him there. Put a sword through his chest to save the world. Killed the man I loved. This is where I belong. Somehow my eyes start leaking again. I thought I’d shed all the tears I had. Guess I was wrong. 

“Bloody buggerin’ fuck…” 

It sounds like he takes several deep breaths. Don’t really know. Don’t really care. 

“Look, slayer…”

“I’m not the slayer,” I remind him.

“Oh, not this shite again! You did what you had to and saved the whole sodding world doin’ it. You aren’t the only one who's ever lost anyone! So build a fuckin’ bridge and get the bloody hell over it!” 

He was practically shouting by the time he got to the end of his little speech, pulling against his chains to try and get closer, looking angry enough to actually do something if he got close enough.

I look over at him, wondering. Would he do it? If we got close enough? Looking him in the eyes right now, I can’t answer that question. And it brings up a question of my own.

“Why were you there?” 

It catches him off guard. All of his anger just… drops away as he looks at me, his brow furrowed with confusion. 

“I know you’ve been following me.”

“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” He feigns indifference and backs away a couple of feet.

“What do you want from me?” 

“Not what you’re thinkin’, slayer.” He insists with a little more anger than necessary. 

I don’t even know what I’m thinking, so that’s a given.

“Then why?”

“Drop it, alright?” He insists and turns away.

“Why?”

“You owe me! That’s why!” He shouts as he lunges towards me again, the chains pulling his arms taught behind him, his vampire face fully forward and his yellow eyes boring into mine. “You owe me one last fucking fight. I damn well deserve that much for everything I sacrificed for you and your damn plan that let Angelus take Dru from me where I can’t… can’t ever…” 

He seems to crumble in on himself for several moments before he roars loud enough to shake the walls. Or at least my brain inside my skull. 

“You owe me, slayer.” He insists again, his voice deep, dark, and dangerous. 

“I’m not the slayer,” I whisper to him, an unspoken apology contained in them as well. 

He can only stare back at me in stunned silence, words apparently failing him.

I close my eyes and allow the heaviness of sleep to take me. I doubt I’ll slip into oblivion and never wake. That’d be too easy. No, I'll wake up again, trapped here in hell. After all, I'm right where I deserve to be. 

We both are.


	4. 4

_They were no one. They had wanted to escape from that life and disappear. They’d certainly gotten their wish. The One had been right, they were just like all the others in that regard. She always marveled at how young the new slaves always looked. Had she looked so young 2187 days ago? She must have. She would have been seventeen then. Her hair would have been blond, his too. She would have been smoother, less furry, more round and feminine. Less like nothing but lean muscle seasoned by years of hard labor. He would have looked younger too. A vampire shouldn’t look like he’d aged twenty years, but he was less than an animal in their eyes. They’d considered him a half-breed unworthy of even basic sustenance. At least they fed her. Initially, they would push her back into their cell and give her just enough food to keep her strong enough to work and then left her to either sleep or die, her choice. But in 2187 days, their overlords had never once provided him with blood._

* * *

_Spike - Day 93_

“You have to eat, slayer. Finish it!” The words came out on an angry growl. How much was true anger and how much was the starvation talking was anyone’s guess. Some days he got through to her. Other days, like this one, nothing he said seemed to matter. The bitch had given up and it pissed him off to no end. Slayers, like vampires, were supposed to go out fighting not fading into a shadow of nothingness.

In the beginning, he’d originally had some hope that the infuriating chit was going to fight back. Every day, the demon prison guards would come get them and pack them off to work detail. The first day he’d debated fighting them, but figured it’d be easier to escape once they were both out of the manky cell they’d been relegated to. So he’d played along with their little march to the platform and lined up like a good little prisoner. He had to give it to them, their intimidation and mind control tactics were effective. Not hard to get a bunch of scared kids to do as they're told when you beat the poor sod next to ‘em into nothing more than a bloody stain on the floor. Of course, he wasn’t one for keeping his gob shut and sassed them back, earning himself a right bloody beating. He’d woken up back in the cell only god knows how much later. 

When they’d shoved the slayer back into the cell what felt like hours later, covered in her own set of lashes and bruises, she’d not touched the meager food they left. He’d figured she’d decided to go the route of a proper hunger strike, for all the good it would do. At first, the one demon that called himself Ken seemed amused and told her he was more than happy to let her solve their problem and starve herself to death. But after a while, it seemed to annoyingly dig into his craw. Eventually, the demons decided they weren’t going to let their most valuable prisoner apparently off herself. After an impressive five weeks of living on nothing but water and bordering on too weak to work anymore, Ken had piled in with a half dozen of his guards and shoved a crude funnel down her throat. When your only choices are to either drown or swallow the gruel they poured down your gullet, survival instinct tends to take over. Of course, they’d made a bloody mess of her throat doing it, but they’d more or less got their point across. Yet here they were three months in and there were still times she would barely touch the scraps of what resembled food that they’d rationed to her. 

He hadn’t been so lucky. The first two weeks they hadn’t managed to get him to a work crew, preferring instead to beat him unconscious when he’d failed to answer with the requisite ‘no one’ when asked who he was. When it became obvious that the lot of them couldn’t care less if he got to a point he never healed, his own survival instinct had kicked in as well. He’d gone along with their little head games in the hopes he’d get close enough to some poor soul to at least get enough blood to start healing up the worst of his injuries. The bloody berk hadn’t been joking when he’d said they had no plans to let him feed at all. But he wasn’t a stranger to the desperation that humans in such a work camp harbored. If he could get close enough, he knew more than a few would be willing to offer up their necks for him to drink from. Just as soon as he got these chains off he could have his fill. 

“Slayer,” He tried to temper his rage at her stubborn, bullheaded, obstinate… Christ his hunger was getting to him. “We can’t get the bloody hell out of here unless you eat.”

She just continued looking ahead with a thousand-yard stare. He'd seen humans like this before. Live long enough, in a manner of speaking, to see dozens of wars and it was hard not to. Hell, he'd even seen it in his own father after the Abyssinian expedition when he'd been a boy. Men, shell-shocked by what all they'd seen. Women shell-shocked by what men had put them through. He’d just never thought to see such a look on the face of a slayer.

“Look, slayer,” He was getting desperate, now. “You want to continue on with your misguided self-flagellatin' penance you think you deserve, be my guest. But damn well do it after we get out of this sodding hell hole!” 

Still nothing. 

“Buffy,” He decided maybe a different approach might help. “If I don’t get some blood soon, I won’t be able to control myself. I’ll end up in a feeding frenzy, sucking half a dozen people dry before you even realize what’s happening. You want that on your conscience? Knowin’ you could have saved ‘em if you’d just mustered enough energy to bloody care?!” 

He hadn’t meant to shout the last couple of words, but he was already half out of his mind with hunger. His control was definitely slipping. Thankfully, his words seemed to have cracked through whatever shell she’d stuffed her mind into, as she was now staring at him curiously. In fact, it was a bit unnerving the way she was looking at him. It certainly didn’t help anything when she stood up and started shuffling slowly towards him, only stopping once she reached the limit of the chains at her wrists and ankles. 

“Can you reach?” Her words were soft and curious.

“What’re you wantin’ me to reach, pet?” He had a sinking feeling that he knew. Surely not, though? Not this slayer. Not after all this time. 

“Me,” She answered with a desperate look as she tried to step closer, letting her body lean forward as the chains held her arms and legs tight behind her

“Slayer quit playin’ at bein’ a fucking martyr and work with me for once in your short and miserable life!” He tried to back as far away from her as he could get. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Her face was a mixture of both regret and pity and he once again found his anger raging higher and higher. 

“You damn well should be!” He yelled at her. “This is all your fault! We could have busted out of here in half a tic if you’d have worked with me! I lost _everything_ when I agreed to our little truce. You fucking _owe_ me a real fight to the death, but instead, we’re stuck together slavin’ away in some sodding hell dimension!” 

At some point, he had also reached the end of his chains and was now standing nose to nose with the barmy slayer. 

“You’re right.” Her whispered words were like a cold-hearted slap to the face. But when she turned her head to the side and bared her neck to him, it was like someone had dunked him in a barrel of ice water. 

He could do it. He was close enough that he could stretch just far enough to reach her neck. Hell, he could probably stretch enough to grab and hold her still so he could really dig into her with violent relish. His hunger was screaming at him to do it. It would serve the slayer right. He’d probably end up stuck here in this godforsaken hell for all eternity, but he’d finally rid himself of her. Or maybe he could lure his captors into a false sense of security one of these days before he lost all higher brain function from lack of blood, and get his chains off long enough to make a break for the portal. He’d have his third slayer, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to brag about how he’d done it. But…

“No.” The emphatic word had erupted from him, surprising her and himself. 

“No?” Why the hell did she look like she was afraid of the idea of him not draining her?

“No.” He’d gone and said it a second time, much to his shock and dismay. 

“You have to feed, Spike.” 

She’d said it so plainly. So matter-of-fact. As if the idea were the most simple and straightforward thing on earth. Or, well, in hell. 

“No, not from you.” Sod it all, he really needed to get a reign on his damn words. 

“Why?” 

Bloody hell, the girl looked on the verge of tears and that only ever did two things to him. He’d either turn into a poncy git or fly off into a rage. At the moment, he wasn’t sure which her tears would provoke. 

“You may be a lot of things, slayer, but you aren’t fucking food! Not anymore! _Never_ you! Not to _me_!” He was shooting for anger with his adamant but earnest assertion. If he could work up more anger at her damned death wish, he could stop himself from turning into the useless sap of a wanker he’d been as a human. 

Apparently whatever he’d said worked. The slayer reeled back as if he’d squarely sucker-punched her right in the gut. Five seconds later, he did the same when his conscious brain finally registered what he'd said.

Oh, god, no.

No, no, no, he was just… it was the hunger, that’s all. He’d gone mad with hunger. Because that... that could absolutely only ever be due to madness.

Laughter tinged with evil glee rang out as the one demon, Ken, ambled cheerfully up to the cell door. 

“Well, that was certainly a touching moment.” Ken grinned maliciously at both of them. “I don’t know if I should be amused at how shocked you both look, disgusted at the thought of a half-breed in love with a slayer, or elated at how dumb you both are.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. This wasn’t good. This was a bloody disaster in the making, in more ways than one. 

“In love?” He scoffed. He might be able to work some damage control. He was usually good at thinking on his feet...usually. When he hadn’t been blind-sided by his own fucking... “You’ve gone completely sack of hammers if you think I could ever love such a pathetic, boring, repulsive, weak, dull as ditchwater, slayer.” He looked at Buffy with the most disgusted look he could call up. “The whole idea makes me want to heave.”

“Please,” Ken sent him a rather annoyed but knowing look. “You think I’m completely stupid? I’ve had centuries of practice reading your kind. You think I don’t know you’re trying to throw me off? I knew it the moment you stormed into our little mission house to try and save her.” The demon laughed again. “I just needed you to realize it so I can use it against you.”

He knew this game. He'd played it often enough with Angelus that he could whistle the tune and shout the lyrics. But in this case, he had one advantage.

“You’re bluffing. Slayer’s too valuable to you.” He smirked at the demon, knowing he was calling him out. “Already proved that, haven't you, Ken." He’d put as much disdain as he could in the now hated name.

The demon wasn’t too happy about that. In fact, the guy was so incensed, he whistled for a couple more goons as he grabbed a nearby club and they charged into the cell and proceeded to beat the crap out of him. 

He put up a good defense for a while. Well, as good as one could when you’re anchored down with heavy chain and going on three months with no blood. Eventually, they decided he’d had enough and left him in a heap on the floor, with more than a few broken bones. 

“I suggest, half-breed, that you figure out your place here and do it quickly. The slayer may be valuable, but there’s a lot of things I can do that won’t kill her, and I’ve got nothing but time.”

“Leave her alone you bloody pillock.” At least, that’s what he’d tried to say through already swollen lips and a potentially cracked jaw. It had come out over the course of several seconds in a broken, bloody, staccato of sounds without much force behind them. 

“Make me.” The bastard smiled down at him with as much evil glee as Angelus had ever mustered. When he couldn’t seem to marshall enough strength to do much more than glare up at him, the guy just laughed again as he exited the cell, slamming the door with great gusto. “That’s what I thought.”

For long, long, minutes he just lay there. Not much else he could do. At this point, his best bet was to sleep and hope he had enough left in him to at least knit the bones a bit. He'd had worse beatings, probably. But he'd never gone so long without feeding before one.

“Spike?” The slayer’s whispering voice called out to him just as he started to drift.

Was it his imagination, or was there an edge of concern laced into the word? And there was a sound of shuffling, with chains dragging across the ground to go with it.

“Spike?” She was a little more insistent that time, but he couldn’t miss the confusion in her voice, the unspoken question he didn’t want to answer. 

“Leave off, slayer,” He managed to respond with some effort. He wasn’t going to face her today. He wasn’t even going to face himself at the moment. Too many questions in his own mind to worry about hers. 

His demon came violently awake as the scent of rich and potent slayer blood suddenly filled the air, instinctively turning to seek out the smell heedless of any pain or worsening injury. Hesitant eyes met his for a second before zeroing in on the source. The slayer had somehow managed to slice open her palm and was stretched out on the floor extending it towards him as far as she could. 

“It won’t bleed for long,” She prompted him. Her eyes seemed to almost be begging him, but it was probably the hunger doing things to his head. 

With agonizing movements, he managed to get himself back to the center of the cell and hover over the outstretched hand with the small pool of blood collecting in the middle. 

_You aren’t fucking food… never you… not to me._

The words he'd uttered accused him. Shamed him. He wanted to turn away. He wanted to make a point that when he said never he meant it. But he couldn’t. The hunger was too strong. The damage was too great. It was either take it or waste the offered gift and eventually let himself slip off into suspended animation and eventually a vegetative state. The choice wasn’t hard but it was agonizing as hell… in more ways than one. 

He took the gift. His demon lapping the blood with near orgasmic elation that turned quickly to desperation, fangs trying to pull more and more from the jagged wound that was already starting to heal. But hands weren’t a place you could really dig in and find a juicy vein, not that his demon hadn’t tried. It was all he could do to control it enough that he didn’t release the palm to latch onto her wrist and really drink his fill. But he did control it, the demon howling in outrage when her slayer healing had finally sealed off the flow, bereft at the loss of the healing elixir that was slayer’s blood. 

It hadn’t been much, but it would have to be enough. He let himself drift into unconsciousness. It was better that than to face the self-loathing realization that no matter what he’d said, what he thought, or how he felt, in the end... she was food.


	5. 5

_It was ironic how often slaves pleaded with him to end it all when escape or release seemed futile. In their world, the slaves would have never admitted a vampire even existed. Here, their overlords were demons. Most of the slaves quickly learned and readily accepted what he was. Whispers would travel quickly among the new ones and the ones who still had a voice and could still speak in words. He’d done it several times in the beginning, of course; but, only when he could go no longer without feeding. Heeded the call from one of the other slaves to end their torment and taken an arm that had been thrust through the grate along with a desperate plea, and finally fed enough to be full. The other slaves wouldn’t intervene. In fact, they’d usually silently, carefully, covertly, move the body far away. Whether to preserve the possibility for themselves, or out of respect for what they saw as some twisted version of a merciful grim reaper, she didn’t know. But that was long ago. He stopped answering their pleas, never feeding on them again… not anymore... not after…_

* * *

_Day 548 - Buffy_

“Please?” She’d resorted to begging days ago, for all the good it did. Which was exactly none, but she couldn’t give up. “You have to drink.”

When she got no response, she paced to the front of the cell and looked around as far as she could. Seeing nothing, she reached out with her slayer senses, extending them out as far as possible to see if she could tell how close any of the guards were. Feeling secure that there weren’t any close by, she returned to sit next to the curled up vampire who was still staring off into space. Whether he’d gone catatonic or was just choosing to ignore her, she didn’t know.

She turned to her left and pulled out the hidden bit of stone from its hiding place in a crack at the base of the wall. He’d been using it to mark their days since they’d arrived. Carefully, quietly, she moved over and proceeded to gouge another line on the wall at the back corner of their cell. There was no way of knowing the time, or if a day here was like a day back home. Using the work shifts to judge was the only way they had to keep track of it, so they did. Once she’d finished her work, she tucked the stone back in its spot in the crevasse and turned her attention back to him, once again seating herself against the wall next to his head as he continued to lay motionless on the floor, no signs of even knowing she was there.

“Eighteen months?” She asked him and wasn’t really surprised when she didn’t get a response. 

He looked so skeletal. He was nothing like the vampire who had fallen into this hell dimension with her. His eyes were sunken, or maybe it just looked that way because the bones around them stood out so much. The cheekbones that had once been one of his better physical attractions now just made his face look like nothing more than a skull barely covered with skin. His limbs held virtually no muscle anymore, making the bones and joints stick out in sharp relief. She could count his ribs and his abdomen had sunk in as well. 

This was the longest he’d ever gone with so little blood. How he was even conscious enough to refuse her half the time, she had no idea. But he did. Not that it ever helped much. She tried to feed him, but the cuts would close before he could get more than a few mouthfuls. And every time he gave in, he seemed to pull away from her more and more. Now, he didn’t even have the strength to move, the chains being too heavy for him. The one demon had delighted in watching him as he wasted away, pleased with the effects of his punishment. 

Of all the things she had ever pictured could happen to them here, seeing him so broken wasn’t one of them. Never would she have even thought it was possible. He was the strong one. The one who’d survived the evil lessons of his sire’s sire. How odd it was that no amount of beating or whips could break him. No words could hurt him. Broken bones were nothing. But the punishment the one had issued him when they finally caught him feeding was beyond evil. Beyond even torture. There was no name strong enough or bad enough to describe it. 

He’d been so careful. He would always wait until there were no guards around and the one demon was nowhere to be seen or scented. But somehow they’d caught him and he’d paid a terrible price for giving in to the pleas from another slave. 

The new slaves were always a little desperate at first. But soon learned their place in this world of pain and hunger and work. Most of them were strong enough to keep going. Few ever got so desperate or depressed that they decided death was better than living in this hell. Few, but never none. There was always someone asking him, begging him, pleading to end their misery. They knew what he was and didn’t have the strength to do it themselves. When he finally got to the point his hunger was driving him mad, he would give in. 

It had been a young man. Older than her, probably. He’d been here many months and shed tears more often than not, repeating a string of names over and over. She guessed they were family, or friends maybe. Something to remind him of home and keep him sane. But eventually, he’d stopped saying the names. That was when he started asking. He’d come to the wall between the cells and ask him to take his blood. Like all the others before him, he’d said he couldn’t go on here and that at least his death would do something good for someone else. The sixth night of begging with his arm extended through the grate for hours, he finally got his wish. 

Just after the guy slumped against the wall in death, the roaring began. Guards rushing towards the cells, their clubs at the ready, all converging on the door to the cell she shared with him. The door seemed to fly open as they poured into the cell and overtook him. Several had grabbed her as she tried to defend him, pulling her back across the cell and attaching the shackles and chains she hadn’t been forced to wear in many months, maybe even a year. He’d fought like his life depended on it. Even chained, he'd managed to kill three of them with nothing but his innate physical weapons before the sheer number finally overwhelmed him. They’d pinned him on his knees, arms wrenched behind him and painfully dislocated at the shoulders by the look of them. And then the one demon appeared. 

There was no discussion. No evil speeches to tell them his evil plans. Just that horrible chilling smile as he told the demon guards to hold his head. And then the one had slowly and methodically ripped out his fangs. When he’d shifted back to his human form the one had simply kept ripping out teeth, eventually forcing him to shift back to his demon against his will to handle the pain and to try to fight him off. It had taken an agonizing amount of time, but the one had eventually pulled almost every fang and tooth from his mouth. And once he was done, he had left without a word. The other demons took their time, however. Mocking him as they beat him until he was completely unconscious, aiming for his face as much as they could while they laughed at the toothless vampire.

That had been 142 days ago. They hadn’t let her near him for nearly two months after that, keeping her chains shorter than when they’d first been thrown in that cell together. Since then he’d been surviving on what little of her blood she could force him to take. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough to mend the damage of the worst attack on him so far, much less to restore his fangs. She’d never known until now just how long it took for a vampire’s fangs to grow back. Then again, it had taken six months for his spine to heal, so maybe this was par. 

“Any luck?” One of the other slaves from the women’s cell whispered. A much older woman who’d obviously been here many years. 

All she could do was shake her head. She feared that any words she tried to speak would just come out as a sob and she wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing that if she could help it.

“Keep trying,” The woman told her with a look of pity mixed with urgency.

Not that she planned to stop. She needed him. Needed his snark and sharp words to keep her from giving in like the others who had welcomed death with open arms. She needed him to say her name every day like he had before. She needed him to make her say his name. He’d said names were important, that as long as you had a name you were someone. She hadn’t heard him say her name in 142 days. 

How does one fix a broken vampire? Feeding him would certainly help, but between her healing and his lack of fangs, that wasn’t happening. Not in any measurable way, anyway. But blood would only fix his body. He’d told her once that too long without blood would cause brain damage that often never healed. He’d said there were rumors of the ‘Council of Wankers’ capturing vampires and starving them to turn them insane. When she’d laughed and asked why they’d do that, he’d clammed up. Somehow that scared her more until she realized it wasn’t something she’d ever have to worry about again. 

“Hey?” One of the men from the cell behind her tried to quietly get her attention. 

She obliged with a turn of her head towards him. 

With as much stealth as he could, the guy slowly and carefully pushed a bowl through one of the openings and held it out towards her.

“No,” She shook her head. She wouldn’t take their food from them. Her healing and strength meant she could get by on less. They didn’t have that luxury. “I can’t…”

“For him,” The guy urged, his eyes were insistent. 

“Him?” She frowned in response. “Food won’t…”

“Not food,” The guy shook his head. 

That caught her off guard. If he wasn’t handing her food then what was it? 

She carefully scooted over to the offered bowl, almost afraid of what she’d find. It certainly took her breath away when she saw it… blood. It wasn’t much, but it was definitely more than she’d been able to get into him herself. 

“Enough?” The guy’s questioning whisper was barely audible. 

She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t even form a response. 

“They’ll be back!” 

The warning prompted her to action. She took the bowl with a nod of thanks and carefully cradled it in her hands as she scooted back to her spot at his head. After a few seconds of deciding logistics, she carefully set the bowl down and then turned him over and pulled his upper body into her lap. Cradling his head with one arm, she picked up the bowl with the other and held it to his lips.

“Drink.” 

It was a simple order. And he ignored it. Was he too far gone to even take the blood in front of him? She knew he was still in there. At least his demon was because it slowly shifted to the fore. 

“Please?” She was on the verge of sobbing now. “Please drink?” She tried to stifle her feelings, if she did start crying, she’d likely spill the blood and he needed every drop. “Spike? Please? God, please drink!”

Still nothing. She had nothing left to lose except him. Losing Angel had nearly destroyed her, but as twisted as it was she couldn’t lose him. He was the only thing she had left to hold on to, to keep her here, to keep her alive. 

“I can’t lose you, too!” Her words were desperate as tears she’d been trying to hold back began to fall, splashing onto his drawn and deathly gray face. “You’re all that’s left… please?”

His golden eyes were finally looking up at her directly and it almost undid her right then. It was more response than she’d seen in a long time. 

“Drink, please, Spike? For me?” 

She tilted the bowl up as she awkwardly tried to pour it into him without spilling any of it. As it started to finally fill his mouth, he began to swallow. And much to her relief, he kept swallowing as she slowly gave him the rest of it. When he’d finished it all, she found a sharp edge on one of the rocks that formed the wall behind her and dragged her wrist forcefully across it several times trying to get it to bleed without having to leave him to retrieve the small crudely fashioned rock blade she’d been using. It hadn’t worked very well, but she pushed it against his mouth anyway, feeling him briefly seal his lips around the wound but he was too weak to suck at it enough to pull much out and she found herself falling apart at the thought that it was all too little, too late.

“Here!” The older woman whispered urgently as she herself held a food bowl through the cell grate on the other side. 

She carefully shifted him back to the ground and swiftly crawled over to the other side and took the bowl from the woman. 

“It’s not much,” The woman seemed to be apologizing.

“Thank you,” Was all she could say as she turned and scurried back to him with the bowl. 

She pulled him onto her lap again and settled the edge of the bowl against his lips once more. This time, she didn’t have to ask. He drank as she poured until nothing was left and prayed it would be enough for now. 

His demon slowly subsided, giving way to sunken and weary blue eyes looking up at her with unasked questions calling to her. She didn’t have answers. She didn’t even know the questions. He seemed to understand somewhat as his eyes slowly rolled closed and he slipped into what she hoped was sleep as she continued to hold him. 

“Help any?” The older woman called to her. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there holding him like this. 

“Maybe.” It was the only answer she could give. And besides, she had questions of her own. “Why?” She asked the woman, unable to fathom why they would offer up their own blood, and the strength that went with, it for him. 

“One of us, right?” The woman smiled sadly. “Shows more mercy than the guards.”

“We’re the reason they did it.” The guy from the cell next to her added. “Seemed right.” 

“Thank you.” It really was all she could say. All other words seemed to be stuck in her throat, choked with tears of relief and awe and maybe even a little hope. 

“Sleep,” The woman gently urged her. “We’ll do what we can.”

She nodded as she slumped back against the wall behind her, his head still cradled in her lap. It didn’t take long for the call of exhaustion to overtake her, as for the first time in recent memory she finally had a tiny flicker of hope.


End file.
